To the person I posted to last night... . Lately, your line of debate has been that deaths are down and trending down -- despite the fact that the percentage of positives are way up, hospitalizations are climbing (again, despite your recent rants stating they weren't), and ICU beds are filling up as well. Here's a Tweet thread that addresses that "inconsistency".
Miles Beckett
@mbeckett
CEO/Co-Founder Silversheet (acq. AMN Healthcare). B4 CEO/Co-Founder EQAL. Cr8r lonelygirl15. Investor Carbon Hlth, Paloma, Tradesy, Replicated +more. LA native.
The trillion dollar question. Why are COVID cases increasing while deaths are decreasing? The answer is simple. It's called Simpson's paradox and it's the result of incorrectly pooling data and arriving at a false conclusion. A thread 1/9 #COVID19 #ThursdayThoughts
2/9 If you lump the data and look at the US as a whole, you'll observe: Cases are increasing, positivity rate is increasing, hospitalizations are increasing, and deaths are decreasing. Until recently, it also looked liked hospitalizations were decreasing and positivity was flat.
3/9 It would be rational to come to the following conclusions. "Young people are getting it now, not old people." "We've gotten better at treating it, the death rate has fallen." "We're testing more people, so we're seeing more cases." Twitter is awash with these.
4/9 There's some truth to these conclusions. Yes, more young people than old are getting it (for now). Yes, we have gotten better at treating it (a little). Yes, we are testing more people and finding more cases (somewhat). None of these conclusions explain the effect.
5/9 Here's the truth. The COVID-19 outbreak, is not ONE outbreak spread evenly across the US. It is MANY outbreaks spread unevenly. You need to look at state data, or better, county data to really understand what's going
6/9 For instance, take AZ and TX. Cases AND deaths have both been increasing for weeks. FL looks similar (except their data sucks, so it's hard to analyze precisely). If you cone in on Miami and Houston, it's much worse
7/9 This is the heart of Simpson's paradox. If you pool data without regard to the underlying causality, you'll get erroneous results.
*******https://pbs.twimg.com/card_img/12783...60x360********
Simpson's Paradox
Thanks to https://brilliant.org/minutephysics for sponsoring this video! This video is about Simpson's paradox, a statistical paradox and ecological fallacy ...
youtube.com
8/9 The truth is simple, and horrifying. We are about to have dozens of NYCs around the country. The next 8 weeks are going to brutal, no matter what we do. ICUs overflowing, ventilators rationed, hundreds of thousands of deaths.
9/9 Unfortunately, the virus is still here and we've failed to manage it with mis-step after mis-step since the beginning. I have no agenda. I'm a doctor, a scientist, a tech founder, a husband, and a father. I'm simply sad that it's come to this. Stay safe.
My apologies as the thread includes a few graphs that I don't know how to copy/paste directly to the page without it turning into a link to the graph vs the graph itself. Still, it obviously explains why deaths have yet to move upwards. Hopefully, you can grasp this. Probably not but, just maybe...
Next, you're now arguing that the diagnostic tests are not as accurate as we need them to be and, that is actually true although not to the degree you maintain. Also, you (and many others) constantly talk about the fact that many who are infected are asymptomatic or, only get minor symptoms (also true). Which, you and those others use as justification that we shouldn't be "afraid" to go out and, as justification for why we should be re-opening the economy. Well, here's a link to an article from the website "Stat" which looks at the diagnostic effectiveness of CT scans.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/16/...navirus-tests/
Here's something from the article:
"The scans detect hazy, patchy, “ground glass” white spots in the lung, a telltale sign of Covid-19. In one recent study of 1,014 patients, published in the journal Radiology, scientists in China reported that chest CT found 97% of Covid-19 infections. In comparison, the study found that 48% of patients who had negative results on the swab test, which detect the coronavirus’s genome, in fact had the disease."
"A positive result on the swab tests is usually reliable. “If you get a positive test result, looking for the RNA of the virus with the current methods that we have, it’s very likely to be a true positive,” said Jana Broadhurst, an infectious disease doctor and director of the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit Clinical Laboratory at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. But “if you get a negative test result, [the chance that it’s wrong is] about 30%.” Of every 100 symptomatic people who test negative for Covid-19, 30 are actually infected. The test missed them."
There is also growing belief in the scientific community that those who develop mild symptoms or, are even completely asymptomatic, are at risk for permanent physiological damage to either their respiratory or pulmonary systems. Which is another significant strike against the idea of... "what are we worried about? 80 plus percent who get it are either asymptomatic or, get only mild symptoms".... The point is, this virus and it's attending challenges IS AS BAD as the 99.99999% of scientists and medical experts are saying it is.
Unfortunately, due to the incredibly massive and criminal mismanagement of the virus at the federal level, until an effective vaccine is widely available, the ONLY way we can truly prevent significant spread is the through the use of strict lock downs. Hell, we could probably do some type of successful partial opening of society but, that would actually require getting at least 80-90% of the country to accept the need to wear a mask in public, as well as not participating in gatherings of more than 10 people. However, since we've obviously proven that 40% of the population is either too vain or too stupid to understand they actually work, we're really only left with the stay-at-home orders until a vaccine is available.
One more thing. And, this isn't addressed specifically to "you" but, more to the constant diatribe on social media by the "open it up" types. Since even Fauci and many other experts are saying they are confident we'll have a functional vaccine available by January of 2021, how does the idea of being in a "stay-at-home" scenario until then meet the definition of "we can't stay locked down forever!!"? I didn't realize that 8-9 months is now the definition of "forever"... Again, if our government would simply do what other western democracies have done and actually spent money effectively by paying individuals and businesses enough to keep them afloat until then, while simultaneously halting loan payments on big ticket items until the pandemic is over, we could actually afford to do strict lock downs until January. But no, we need to prop up billion dollar corporations instead. You know..."socialism" for the wealthy and corporations -- AGAIN...
Miles Beckett
@mbeckett
CEO/Co-Founder Silversheet (acq. AMN Healthcare). B4 CEO/Co-Founder EQAL. Cr8r lonelygirl15. Investor Carbon Hlth, Paloma, Tradesy, Replicated +more. LA native.
The trillion dollar question. Why are COVID cases increasing while deaths are decreasing? The answer is simple. It's called Simpson's paradox and it's the result of incorrectly pooling data and arriving at a false conclusion. A thread 1/9 #COVID19 #ThursdayThoughts
2/9 If you lump the data and look at the US as a whole, you'll observe: Cases are increasing, positivity rate is increasing, hospitalizations are increasing, and deaths are decreasing. Until recently, it also looked liked hospitalizations were decreasing and positivity was flat.
3/9 It would be rational to come to the following conclusions. "Young people are getting it now, not old people." "We've gotten better at treating it, the death rate has fallen." "We're testing more people, so we're seeing more cases." Twitter is awash with these.
4/9 There's some truth to these conclusions. Yes, more young people than old are getting it (for now). Yes, we have gotten better at treating it (a little). Yes, we are testing more people and finding more cases (somewhat). None of these conclusions explain the effect.
5/9 Here's the truth. The COVID-19 outbreak, is not ONE outbreak spread evenly across the US. It is MANY outbreaks spread unevenly. You need to look at state data, or better, county data to really understand what's going
6/9 For instance, take AZ and TX. Cases AND deaths have both been increasing for weeks. FL looks similar (except their data sucks, so it's hard to analyze precisely). If you cone in on Miami and Houston, it's much worse
7/9 This is the heart of Simpson's paradox. If you pool data without regard to the underlying causality, you'll get erroneous results.
*******https://pbs.twimg.com/card_img/12783...60x360********
Simpson's Paradox
Thanks to https://brilliant.org/minutephysics for sponsoring this video! This video is about Simpson's paradox, a statistical paradox and ecological fallacy ...
youtube.com
8/9 The truth is simple, and horrifying. We are about to have dozens of NYCs around the country. The next 8 weeks are going to brutal, no matter what we do. ICUs overflowing, ventilators rationed, hundreds of thousands of deaths.
9/9 Unfortunately, the virus is still here and we've failed to manage it with mis-step after mis-step since the beginning. I have no agenda. I'm a doctor, a scientist, a tech founder, a husband, and a father. I'm simply sad that it's come to this. Stay safe.
My apologies as the thread includes a few graphs that I don't know how to copy/paste directly to the page without it turning into a link to the graph vs the graph itself. Still, it obviously explains why deaths have yet to move upwards. Hopefully, you can grasp this. Probably not but, just maybe...
Next, you're now arguing that the diagnostic tests are not as accurate as we need them to be and, that is actually true although not to the degree you maintain. Also, you (and many others) constantly talk about the fact that many who are infected are asymptomatic or, only get minor symptoms (also true). Which, you and those others use as justification that we shouldn't be "afraid" to go out and, as justification for why we should be re-opening the economy. Well, here's a link to an article from the website "Stat" which looks at the diagnostic effectiveness of CT scans.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/16/...navirus-tests/
Here's something from the article:
"The scans detect hazy, patchy, “ground glass” white spots in the lung, a telltale sign of Covid-19. In one recent study of 1,014 patients, published in the journal Radiology, scientists in China reported that chest CT found 97% of Covid-19 infections. In comparison, the study found that 48% of patients who had negative results on the swab test, which detect the coronavirus’s genome, in fact had the disease."
"A positive result on the swab tests is usually reliable. “If you get a positive test result, looking for the RNA of the virus with the current methods that we have, it’s very likely to be a true positive,” said Jana Broadhurst, an infectious disease doctor and director of the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit Clinical Laboratory at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. But “if you get a negative test result, [the chance that it’s wrong is] about 30%.” Of every 100 symptomatic people who test negative for Covid-19, 30 are actually infected. The test missed them."
There is also growing belief in the scientific community that those who develop mild symptoms or, are even completely asymptomatic, are at risk for permanent physiological damage to either their respiratory or pulmonary systems. Which is another significant strike against the idea of... "what are we worried about? 80 plus percent who get it are either asymptomatic or, get only mild symptoms".... The point is, this virus and it's attending challenges IS AS BAD as the 99.99999% of scientists and medical experts are saying it is.
Unfortunately, due to the incredibly massive and criminal mismanagement of the virus at the federal level, until an effective vaccine is widely available, the ONLY way we can truly prevent significant spread is the through the use of strict lock downs. Hell, we could probably do some type of successful partial opening of society but, that would actually require getting at least 80-90% of the country to accept the need to wear a mask in public, as well as not participating in gatherings of more than 10 people. However, since we've obviously proven that 40% of the population is either too vain or too stupid to understand they actually work, we're really only left with the stay-at-home orders until a vaccine is available.
One more thing. And, this isn't addressed specifically to "you" but, more to the constant diatribe on social media by the "open it up" types. Since even Fauci and many other experts are saying they are confident we'll have a functional vaccine available by January of 2021, how does the idea of being in a "stay-at-home" scenario until then meet the definition of "we can't stay locked down forever!!"? I didn't realize that 8-9 months is now the definition of "forever"... Again, if our government would simply do what other western democracies have done and actually spent money effectively by paying individuals and businesses enough to keep them afloat until then, while simultaneously halting loan payments on big ticket items until the pandemic is over, we could actually afford to do strict lock downs until January. But no, we need to prop up billion dollar corporations instead. You know..."socialism" for the wealthy and corporations -- AGAIN...
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